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togelius writes "We're running a competition to see who can program the best AI for a version of Super Mario Bros. It's about deciding what to do at each time step — run, jump, shoot etc. — based on a description of the platforms, items and enemies around Mario. This is hard. It's so hard we believe that some sort of machine learning algorithm will be necessary to reach good playing performance. But really, any approach is fair game. We welcome hard-coded submissions, commercial AI programmers, academics and amateurs alike. Whoever wins, it will be really interesting. The competition is associated with two IEEE conferences, and there are cash prizes available for the best submissions."

I highly like this competitions idea, but I won't participate, because the deadline is far, far too soon.

I mean, I am supposed to understand their framework and implement, test and tweak an artificial intelligence for a pretty complicated task like this in a month (let alone, 2 weeks), with my rusty java, rusty AI-knowledge (I'd try emergent behaviour, probably)? Sorry, but this is just plain impossible, since there is enough work to do from the university and other hobby projects. Give me until, like. Christmas and I'd try.

Plus, the time shortens even further, as it appears that there are documentation issues, so one would probably have to work out how the game state is given to the AI.

So overall: very interesting, but too short for someone who actually has other work to do

So how does it test that a random level is completable? Seems to me that if there were an algorithm to do this, this competition would be moot. If there's not, there's going to be a lot of trouble with impossible random levels.

No, but shouldn't a computer be able to do it better? Perfect concentration, perfect timing, the ability to make split-second decisions, no visual limitations of how much of the screen can be seen; computers have the potential to do far better. Isn't that the idea?